Impeach Bush -- US Out Now! by Jack Random
www.dissidentvoice.org
June 18, 2005

“Our focus is not on the
past. It’s on the future.”

--
Scott McClellan, White House Spokesman.

How
convenient to focus on the future when the past is a compelling indictment
of criminal and immoral behavior. If it were an adequate explanation, then
Richard Nixon would have completed his second term, Lyndon Johnson would
have sought reelection, and the Nuremberg trials would not have been
convened.

Beyond the incredulity of the president’s
response to a growing body of evidence that his administration cooked the
books to justify an illegal and unjustified war, the crime is not limited
to the past. It is ongoing and has no end in sight.

When you are caught in the process of
committing a crime, whether it is a common burglary or a war of naked
aggression, you do not ask leave to consummate the act. Should this be any
less apparent when there are hundreds of thousands of lives in the
balance?

This nation went to war on allegations our
leaders knew with absolute clarity were false and malicious. Stubbornly
clinging to the lie while slandering those who bring the truth to public
light only compounds the crime with arrogance and obstruction -- the very
crimes that ultimately ended the reign of Nixon.

Under the leadership of this president,
America is directly responsible for the massive destruction of an innocent
nation’s infrastructure, a monumental waste of desperately needed
resources, and the loss of more lives than we are willing or able to
count.

The defenders of war and the White House may
be right in one respect.
The Downing Street Memo is nothing new. It is like waiting for an
autopsy to confirm a death. After a steady stream of revelations and
testimonials from impeccable sources such as Ambassador Joseph Wilson,
counter-terrorism analyst
Richard Clarke, and former Treasury Secretary
Paul O’Neill, as well as the targeted leaks of the CIA, British
Intelligence and the State Department, anyone who did not know that the
war was ordained at Bush V. Gore, was not following the news. Anyone who
did not know that intelligence was shaped to policy is deliberately
uninformed.

Unfortunately, the White House press corps
(also know as the American mainstream media) has become very adept at
obscuring the truth with subterfuge. Like a mantra, the lies of war are
repeated until they become accepted truths. Our leaders were betrayed by a
massive intelligence failure. Like an illusionist, the war propagandists
offer up an endless parade of dazzle, titillation and outrage. The
bug-eyed runaway bride gains more attention than the affairs of state (The
people want to know!) and Congress follows suit by calling a special
session to decide the fate of Terri Schiavo.

It has become necessary to repeat the truth
over and over again until the most reticent of news outlets can no longer
ignore it. As it was in the days of Watergate, so it is today. Both the
media and the political powers are entrenched. Their primary motive is not
to reveal or embrace the truth but to secure their power base by any and
all means.

At the time of Watergate, however, it was
the blessing of this nation that the Washington Post was an island of
integrity in a sea of indifference. The blessing now is that the internet
has given birth to an alternate universe of knowledge, information and
analysis. Neither the Times nor the Post has the power to ignore Memogate
to a quiet death. The bloggers gave it wings and they will keep it flying.
Members of Congress are jumping on board not out of courage or a sudden
resurgence of conscience but of desperation. The truth is coming out. Like
the bulging waters of a broken dam, those gutless politicians who are not
braced for impact will be swept away like yesterday’s news. Those who
voted for the war, the Patriot Act and the continued occupation, who
christened Freedom Fries and chastised the antiwar movement for treachery
and fanaticism, are scrambling now for higher grounds. The warning has
sounded; the tsunami is upon them.

Those of us who recognized the truth and
opposed the war from its inception owe it to the collective conscience of
the nation to continually point out that it was never difficult to
decipher. George Bush may be charming at a certain level to a certain
segment of society but he was never good at hiding the truth. He wanted
war so bad he flaunted it like a chest-thumping gorilla. He ordered Shock
and Awe while the disarmament of Iraq was literally in progress just so he
could mark the anniversary of Daddy’s War with his own. It could not have
been more obvious.

Those who wish to jump on the antiwar,
anti-occupation bandwagon now, you are long overdue and welcome but do not
ask for special recognition. Let it be recorded in history that America’s
political leaders (with the exception of the Congressional Black Caucus
and very few others) were slow to act and that they deferred until
shifting public opinion made it tenuous not to declare opposition.

As for those who continue to support the
president, his wars, his occupations and his doctrine of perpetual war,
may whatever deity you confide in (for I am told you are people of faith)
forgive you. As you stood with the president, so may you fall. It is very
late in the day and there is a price to be paid in blood, treasure and
political capital for every moment we continue to prolong the inevitable.

We have lost another war we should never
have begun. We have darkened the dignity of the nation. We have dimmed the
light of freedom and democracy. We have lowered the flag in mourning and
in shame and we have held it to public ridicule.

We cannot regain what we have lost by
continuing to prosecute the occupation and expanding the war to other
nations under the familiar Vietnam fantasy that just a little more will
turn the tide. There is no winning an endless war and the enemy we have
chosen to fight (ultimately, the entire universe of Islam) will never
yield. We can only hope to limit the damage, make amends and reparations.

Let us begin now, before another life is
lost or another dollar cast to the wind, by announcing the withdrawal of
all American troops and simultaneously removing the fundamentally flawed
Commander-in-Chief that led us tragically astray.

Jack Random
is the author of Ghost Dance Insurrection (Dry Bones Press) the
Jazzman Chronicles, Volumes I and II. The Chronicles have been
published by CounterPunch, the Albion Monitor,
FirstPeoplesCentury, Trinicenter, Global Research and
other notable sites. The Jazzman Chronicles are available at
City Lights Bookstore
in SF. Visit his website:
www.jackrandom.com.